Family and Community Engagement

1. Family and Community Engagement Webinar 1: A Walk Through the Handbook Framing the Discussion Families and Learning Center on Innovation & Improvement Office of Elementary and Secondary Education U. S. Department of Education

2. Welcome! Download the Handbook free from: www.families-schools.org Or purchase the published version from: Information Age Publishing www.infoagepub.com

3. How the Handbook is Organized? • Part I: Framing the Discussion • Part II: Families and Learning • Part III: Families and Schools • Part IV: Checklist of Suggested Practices

4. Why the Handbook? • Bring best research together in one place • Add the wisdom of many voices • Present in a straight-forward manner • Provide practical application • Include ample references and resources • Leaven with a dash of reality with vignettes

5. The Introduction • Finding the themes that thread through the Handbook • Weaving together the varied voices into a symphony • Charging the reader with the task of finding personal meaning and applying it “The Handbook’s recommendations point to an urgent need to build the capacity of schools, themselves, to effectively reach out to and engage their community and their families.” Helen Westmoreland

6. Part I: Framing the Discussion • New Directions for Title I • The School Community • Making Data Matter in Family Engagement • Engaging Families and Communities in School Turnarounds • Social, Emotional, and Academic Learning • Engaging the Entire Community

7. New Directions for Title I Family and Community Engagement: Expanding Opportunity from a Tradition of CommitmentOliver Moles & Arnold Fege “We need to visualize a much broader concept of education to move beyond “schooling” and into areas of child development and parent empowerment.”

8. The School Community: Working Together for Student Success Sam Redding “A school community rests upon mutual respect, strong relationships, shared responsibility, and focused attention to students’ academic, personal, social, and emotional learning.”

9. Making Data Matter in Family EngagementHeather Weiss & M. Elena Lopez “Families want to know how their child is doing in school so that they can help them at home. They benefit from timely and relevant data on attendance, behavior, and academic progress and performance.”

10. Engaging Families and Communities in School Turnarounds: When Students Can’t WaitLauren MorandoRhim “Turnaround efforts require a substantive and long-term engagement of key stakeholders that influence students and the schools they attend. Parents and the broader community are uniquely positioned to advocate for high-quality schools.”

11. Social, Emotional, and Academic Learning: Complementary Goals for School-Family PartnershipsAmy Mart, Linda Dusenbury, & Roger P. Weissberg “Social and emotional competencies develop in dynamic relationship with others as they are practiced, modeled, and reinforced across contexts.”

12. Engaging the Entire Community: The Community Schools’ WayMarty Blank “Partnerships build relationships among schools and other sectors of the community with a vested interest in the well-being of children and families.”

13. Pause to Reflect What struck a chord with you in these Part I chapters? – Jot a couple notes for the discussion later.

14. Part II: Families and Learning • Aspiration and Expectations • Self-Efficacy: Up to the Challenge • Curriculum of the Home • Homework and Study Habits • Engaging Families in Reading • Reading and Literacy • College and Career Readiness

15. Aspiration and Expectations: Providing Pathways to Tomorrow William Jeynes “Myriad studies now confirm that high parental expectations of their children as expressed in their behavior, attitudes, and communication are associated with higher scholastic outcomes among children in school. To the degree that educators foster these expectations, American children can flourish.”

16. Self-Efficacy: Up to the ChallengeKathleen Hoover-Dempsey “Self-efficacy is central to understanding how individuals make decisions about the kinds of activities they will undertake in various domains of their lives. For parents, decisions about the activities they will engage in supporting their students’ school learning are among the most important that they make.”

17. Curriculum of the HomeHerbert J. Walberg “The first six years of life and the ‘curriculum of the home’ may be decisive influences on academic learning. These effects appear pervasive in school learning, including the development of reading comprehension and verbal literacy. Therefore, reaching out to families to encourage academically constructive child practices is time well spent.”

18. Homework and Study HabitsLee Shumow “Anecdotal reports regularly appear in mass media describing homework with war metaphors. To the contrary, one recent study found that, when adolescents were doing homework with their parents, they enjoyed it more than when alone and concentrated better than with peers.”

19. Engaging Families in ReadingHolly Kreider “Research clearly points to third grade as a watershed moment in children’s education. Third grade reading fluency is highly predictive of children’s long-term school success, including high school performance and college enrollment. Parents and other primary caregivers are instrumental in fostering language, reading, and literacy skills so essential for school success”

20. Reading and LiteracyDiana Hiatt-Michael “Reading and literacy are the heart of the educational process. Parents affect children’s interest and reading ability in a number of ways. Parental expectations, speaking and reading to children, number of books in the home, parental interest in written and oral communication, parental knowledge of language arts development, and parental enjoyment of reading foster student achievement in reading.”

21. College and Career ReadinessMary R. Waters and John Mark Williams “When classroom time has no relevance to the students’ legitimate aspirations, the resulting disengagement makes them casualties of the educational system. “

22. Pause to Reflect What struck a chord with you in these Part II chapters on Families and Learning? – Jot a couple notes for the discussion later.

23. The Vignettes • Jessica, by William Jeynes • Annabelle, by Marilyn Murphy • Tyler, by Lee Shumow • Xiomara, by Georganne Morin and Holly Kreider • Alicia, by Diana Hiatt-Michael

24. Discussion • What struck a chord with you in Parts I and II, and how does it relate to your role? • What question do you have that one of the webinar participants or facilitators might be able to answer?